The Football Alliance was an association football league in England which ran for three seasons, from 1889–90 to 1891–92.
It was formed by 12 clubs as a rival to the Football League, which had begun in the 1888–89 season, also with 12 member clubs. The Alliance covered a similar area to the League, stretching from the English Midlands to the North West, but also further east in Sheffield, Grimsby and Sunderland. Some of the clubs which originally founded the Alliance had played in The Combination the year before, but that league collapsed as a result of the disarray and lack of organization. The president of the Football Alliance was John Holmes, also the president of The Wednesday who were the first champions winning fifteen games out of twenty-two.
At the end of the Alliance's first season, when Stoke dropped out of the Football League, the Alliance accepted them as a new member. The following year, Stoke and Darwen, another Alliance club, were accepted into the League, taking its membership to 14 clubs.
In 1892 it was decided to formally merge the two leagues, and so the Football League Second Division was formed, consisting mostly of Football Alliance clubs. The existing League clubs, plus three of the strongest Alliance clubs, comprised the Football League First Division.
Read more about Football Alliance: Member Clubs, Football Alliance Champions
Famous quotes containing the words football and/or alliance:
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—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can’t long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)